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Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics.

Serving a billion web requests with boring code
Bill Mill, notes.billmill.org, 2024/07/10

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We've all heard those stories about the government web app that crashes as soon as it's launched. Corporate and institutional web apps can be as bad. The reason is that serving a billion requests is very different from serving a few thousand. This article describes the process of building a billion-request website that did not crash. That doesn't mean the process was flawless - they came to regret using React (for these reasons) after a few years. Using gRPC (a request protocol) "was not as great for us as I'd hoped."

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A How To Guide: Creating Educational Apps for Student Success
Sam Eastes, The Learning Agency, 2024/07/10

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When I read a title like "How to do P" my first question is whether, after reading the article, I can "do P". In this case, the answer is no. It's not a bad article, but it's badly titled. It should perhaps better be called "things to consider when building an educational app". In that there is some good advice, like, "The difficult part is not the technical building, but the interaction design," said Devan Walton... "Being able to pick thoughtful design hypotheses that you can test and iterate is much more valuable than dumping all your money hiring developers." That's true, of course, but you also need to know how to actually write the application code, which unless you've done it is generally what stops most people.

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Introducing Plausible Community Edition
Marko Saric, Plausible Analytics, 2024/07/10

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This is exactly why the content on my site uses a Creative Commons Non-Commercial license rather than CC-by. "Many indie hackers that contact us about our experience of running an open source startup tell us that their main concern about open sourcing their code is the risk that large corporations will resell that code and take advantage of their project." This article explains why the developers of Plausible, an open source website analytics tool, are changing their business model. Via Ben Werdmuller, who as the veteran of similar experiences is sympathetic.

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Code Acts in Education: Oblongification of Education
Ben Williamson, National Education Policy Center, 2024/07/10

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Ben Williamson explains his "metaphorical labouring of the 'oblong' as a model of education" as a way to illustrate how "despite the rhetoric of transformation, all these AI tutors really seem to promise is a one-to-one transactional model of learning where the student interacts with a device." At times he seem to suggest that it is this pedagogy that's the problem, but the main issue seems to be his belief that AIs simply won't be successful: "AI tutors are simplified models of the very complex, situated work of pedagogy. We shouldn't expect so much from oblongs." I think he's drawing too much from the metaphor, from corporate rhetoric, and from Apple's widely criticized 'crush' advertisement, and not enough from what AI is actually doing in education.

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American views of higher education continue to worsen
Bryan Alexander, 2024/07/10

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This survey sounds like that famous restaurant review: "The food is awful! And there's not enough of it." It reflects, as Bryan Alexander suggests, "the varied purposes Americans think higher education should fulfill." One side complains that higher education is indoctrination, while the other focuses on value for money and cost. I think that so long as higher education - public or otherwise - is only serving an elite, public suspicion and doubt will continue to escalate. Opening up is at the same time the best way to counter accusations of bias and the best way to improve utility and access.

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We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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